A hacker group close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is said to have attempted to gain access to email accounts of campaign staff for the US Democrats and Republican candidate Donald Trump , according to a report by the US company Google .
The group, known as APT42 , is said to have accessed the personal emails of about a dozen high-ranking Democratic and Republican campaign staff in May and June. At the time, US President Joe Biden was still the Democratic presidential candidate, but after his withdrawal, Vice President Kamala Harris is now running against Trump.
APT42 managed to access the personal Google Mail account of a high-ranking political advisor, the company said in a report by the Threat Analysis Group (TAG). According to the information, the specialists investigate attacks by state actors from abroad.
In the past six months, around 60 percent of APT42's attempted attacks were aimed at targets in the US and Israel , according to the report. Since the beginning of May, there has been an increase in cyberattacks on users with ties to the Israeli military and defense sector , as well as to diplomats, academics and non-governmental organizations in Israel. Among other things, the actors are said to have posed as employees of a well-known US think tank.
Since the weekend, there have been increasing indications that foreign actors are attempting to influence the US election campaign with cyber attacks. On Wednesday , Harris' campaign team confirmed to the German Press Agency that they had been the target of a foreign cyber attack. The FBI had previously announced that it was investigating possible access to internal communications from Trump's campaign team. dpa
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